The Road to Camp David • 361foretaste of larger invasions to come, Israeli forces in 1976 entered southern
Lebanon to destroy Palestinian bases and warned Syria to keep its troops
away from Lebanon's southern border. Christian Lebanese in the south—
cut off from their coreligionists in the rest of the country—began crossing
into Israel to sell their produce, seek work, or get medical care. The Arabs
accused Israel of using Lebanon to prove the traditional Zionist contention
that multireligious states could not last in the Middle East. Actually, most of
the area's regimes helped ruin a country that had once been reasonably free,
democratic, and wealthy.
THE ROAD TO CAMP DAVIDThe US government suspended its quest for Middle East peace during its
1976 presidential election. Both President Gerald Ford and his challenger,
Jimmy Carter, pledged to back a strong and independent Israel and ignored
the Palestinians. The US was not unaffected by the Lebanese civil war, as its
ambassador was assassinated in 1976 and the PLO helped the embassy
evacuate US civilians from Beirut. But Washington would not enter negoti¬
ations with the PLO; such parleys were ruled out by Kissinger during his
1975 peace talks. Most Americans opposed talks with the PLO, as the US
news media and politicians conveyed only Israel's view that Arafat was a
murderer and that his organization was an umbrella for terrorist groups.
After Carter was elected, though, he would try a new initiative to settle the
Arab-Israeli conflict, the Palestinian question, and perhaps the Lebanese
civil war as well.
Carter's Plans
The key to the new administration's thinking on the Middle East lay in a re¬
port recently prepared by the Brookings Institution. Called Towards Peace
in the Middle East, it urged the Arab states to recognize Israel within its pre-
June 1967 boundaries (with some minor border adjustments). Israel was to
turn the Gaza Strip and the West Bank over to a government of Palestini¬
ans, but not necessarily the PLO. It also called for reconvening the Geneva
Conference to reach the necessary agreements. One of the authors of the
Brookings report was William Quandt, who would work with Carter's na¬
tional security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Carter gave high priority to
Middle East peace and began to talk with various heads of state, hoping to
resuscitate the Geneva Conference before the end of 1977.